The series grew out of a 1979 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show presented by The Oxford Revue and starred Angus Deayton, Geoffrey Perkins, Michael Fenton Stevens, Helen Atkinson-Wood and Philip Pope.
However some episodes in the final series made reference to real-life events: "Probe Round the Back" is a parody of investigative journalism which revolved around the Cambridge Five and contains allusions to Spycatcher and the Zircon affair, and "The Flu Special" satirises the then-current HIV/AIDS public awareness campaigns.
At the same time, Nigel Pry gains the idiosyncratic speech patterns and propensity to injury that became his defining traits, and Mike Stand is effectively reinvented as a completely new character, changing from an old-school rock DJ in the first series, to a giggling, infantile children's presenter.
Other significant additional contributions came from, at various times, Jon Canter, Terence Dackombe, Michael Fenton Stevens, Jack (then John) Docherty, Moray Hunter, and in the later series Jeremy Pascall (with whom Deayton and Perkins were concurrently writing The Uncyclopedia of Rock for Capital Radio).
Pope was also responsible for the very long and very contemporary jingles presenting the station telephone number for phone ins (with a false ending) and introducing the commercials.
The "commercials" feature many parodies of current TV adverts and other running jokes, including conversations between housewives Mary (Fenton Stevens putting on a high-pitched voice) and June (Atkinson-Wood); goods and services of dubious legality offered by "Honest Ron – the others are a con" (Stevens); and "blindingly obvious" patronising public service announcements ("Do not throw boiling water over a child").
The Radio Active Drama Repertory Company usually give a performance with wild misreadings of the scripts ("She's seriously one hundred and eleven.
A description of the cover (which Ron attempts to pass off as a depiction of Mary Magdalene, but is actually a reproduction or re-creation of the famous Tennis Girl poster) was deleted completely.
Several key characters from Radio Active transferred to KYTV largely unchanged from their radio incarnations, including Mike Channel, Mike Flex, Anna Daptor and Martin Brown, who formed the central presentation team for KYTV's programmes; other characters including Anna Rabies and the Right Reverend Reverend Wright also transferred across.
A CD of the first series was released in 2010 on the BBC Classic Radio Comedy label, with some minor music edits to "The Midday Show with Anna Daptor".